Link to Post:
http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/2013/05/dan-walsh-at-elvira-gonzalez/
George Stolz's interview with painter Dan Walsh, posted on the occasion of his recent exhibition of paintings at Elvira Gonzalez, Madrid.
Walsh comments: "There is a way of painting that is very much about the elemental, step-by-step methological commitment. Whereas color for me is exactly the opposite. I am hiding under a very methological approach and what many would say is programmatic. But what I am getting out of color is I think quite romantic and quite exploratory compared to the brush marks themselves. It’s how much transparency I use and the color combinations and the -- I don’t want to say quirky color but I have been in some very unusual situations color-wise. And I think because of transparency and the formats I can get away with with certain kind of color situations that I would bet that a lot of other artists can’t handle. It’s because of my knitting, because of my process. I think that’s important to separate these two."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/71385/geometry-under-pressure-don-voisines-paintings/
John Yau reviews an exhibition of paintings by Don Voisine at McKenzie Fine Art, New York, on view through June 9, 2013.
Yau writes: "In the formal tensions Voisine establishes in his painting — as the result of a process, his elements never appear forced or extraneous — all kinds of feelings and possible readings come into play. This is one of the deep, abiding strengths of the artist’s best paintings; they become analogical. In the late 1950s, Stella squeezed space and meaning out of painting. Fifty years later, Voisine has found ways to squeeze both space and meaning back in, to open up what has been pronounced closed. Voisine wasn’t the only one to recover painting, but, unlike many others who rejected the narrative of painting’s death, he did it with a reductive vocabulary of hard-edged geometric forms."
Link to Post:
https://www.artexperiencenyc.com/revisions-another-alan-uglow-and-ted-stamms-minimalisms/
Saul Ostrow reviews recent exhibitions of "two 'minimalist' painters, who lie outside the canon": Alan Uglow at David Zwirner and Ted Stamm at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.
Ostrow notes: "Though under-acknowledged, Uglow and Stamm might best be considered artists whose primary audience are other artists and art world aficionados. Both had noted careers; exhibiting extensively in Europe as well as the States, yet neither were big names. Why their stature in the community of artists does not translate into economic and institutional success is too complex a question to go into here; suffice to say that in the critical environment of the 70s their work just could not be understood, yet interest in it persisted as representing a minority report on what best typifies abstract painting’s alternatives in the period of its supposed demise."
Link to Post:
http://www.nysun.com/arts/abstraction-in-bloom/88294/
Xico Greenwald reviews two abstract painting shows on the Lower East Side: Don Voisine at McKenzie Fine Art (through June 9) and Bob Zoell/Wyatt Kahn at Rachel Uffner Gallery (through June 2).
Greenwald writes that Voisine's "oil-on-wood abstractions here have fastidious surfaces, harmoniously combining glossy, matte and semi-reflective graphite finishes... [Zoell] "crosses out words with colored blocks and then transfers the geometric compositions to metal supports where small paintings are made with high-gloss enamel..." Kahn's works, Greenwald continues, "are assembled shapes of delicately tinted panels stretched over with raw canvas. The works are arranged into bulging, wobbly rectangles with the finesse of an expert mason."
Link to Post:
http://glasstire.com/2013/05/03/biggs-and-collings-suspicious-utopias-an-email-interview/
Michael Bise interviews Emma Biggs & Matthew Collings on the occasion of the exhibition Biggs and Collings: Suspicious Utopias at Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, on view through May 11, 2013.
Biggs and Collings comment: "At the moment in art culture, any proposal to do with “form” is considered bad. As something transcendent, it is automatically linked with considerations of ideology and hegemony, and is seen as an illusion that allows the viewer to remain blind to social realities. Hot contemporary art is interested in plugging in directly to those, and in this kind of art, form can be anything so long as it is explicable in terms of that connection. We, on the other hand, believe that plugging-in to social realities is often an illusion. We think institutional critique, for example, has become formulaic. We address this problem in the textual component of our show in Fort Worth. Our paintings don’t avoid difficult issues but neither do they spell them out as directly readable propaganda. We look at the material and the tangible. Things have to work: the colour has to be objective, it has to be meaningful on colour terms – the same with shape, line, tone – all the elements we use. We attack mystification ruthlessly. If there are comfortable illusions, we see our work as a blow against them."
Link to Post:
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/05/artseen/ted-stamm-paintings
Pac Pobric reviews a recent exhibition of paintings by Ted Stamm at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.
Pobric writes that in 1973 "Stamm began to focus more fully on the overall structure of his work, and soon after he discarded the more traditional square and rectangular supports. His attention turned elsewhere: to the shapes of shadows, or the design of a baseball diamond. What Stamm saw in these models was an escape from the burden of composition. If he took anything from his earlier experiments, it was that the shape of a painting should be specific and that the problem with more traditional configurations was their seemingly accidental nature. New structures allowed him to more deliberately choose the shape of his work, opening an expanded range of possibilities for art that could feel altogether fresh."
Link to Post:
http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2013/04/nichole-van-beek-march-2013.html
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Nichole Van Beek.
Van Beek discusses her recent paintings which derive their visual power from the juxtaposition of opposites. Graphic and painterly marks, pattern and hard-edge shapes, dim and saturated color coalesce in each work to achieve unexpected unities.
Van Beek comments that "a lot of the work is that balance between... 'it happened' and then also having this planned structure. And it comes into play in a lot of different ways. So, being controlled and also being free and having those two things come together..."
Link to Post:
http://www.thoughtsthatcureradically.com/2013/04/matthew-neil-gehring-interview_20.html
Caleb De Jong interviews painter Matthew Neil Gehring about his work on the occasion of the exhibition Matthew Neil Gehring: Brilliant Corners, on view at the Dishman Art Museum, Beaumont, TX, through April 30, 2013.
Gehring comments: "I think that there is a great freedom within a focused practice and the parameters of my natural tendencies, tendencies that have been with me since my earliest work... In many ways, I began as a student with a primary interest in formal work, and I have loved reductive abstract painting and sculpture for as long as I can remember. The new paintings here in Beaumont are formal and they are focused in an extended investigation of a small number of variables and relationships. I am interested in making relatively small moves, where in the past I felt compelled to make significant shifts, large conceptual declarations, from piece to piece."
Link to Post:
http://bombsite.com/issues/999/articles/7144
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe interviews artist Christian Haub. Haub's exhibition New Floats was recently on view at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York.
Haub comments: "I can’t call the Floats paintings because I don’t use paint, but they hang on the wall and come from painting, I think they could be called 'shallow reliefs.' When my wife, Vera Miljkovic, photographs them she has the problem of where to focus. There is the physical surface of the plastic, and then there is the colored light cast behind it on the wall. As you once pointed out, you look both at and through the works. I see the works as like fresco and watercolor—color cast onto and illuminated by the ground. I also think a lot about Matisse’s paper cutouts. My plexi is a sheet of cast acrylic, which, starting out as a liquid, is then cut into pieces and bonded together. I am free to move the parts around as much as I like before fixing them, like collage. Matisse’s final work, the Rosace, was a paper cutout and maquette for a stained glass window."
Link to Post:
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/04/artseen/john-mclaughlin-paintings-1947-1974
Robert C. Morgan reviews the exhibition John McLaughlin: Paintings 1947–1974 at Van Doren Waxter, New York, on view through April 19, 2013.
Morgan writes: "As the desire to see flashy and exorbitant mannerisms in painting appears quantitatively present, yet qualitatively in decline, McLaughlin’s pristine rectangles within rectilinear formats, measuring roughly 48 by 60 inches, hold forth with modesty, even dignity. In any case, it is inconceivable that anyone could grasp a sense of the actual painting through a digital reproduction of the work. McLaughlin’s paintings require as much attentiveness to placement as to the space contained by the work itself. Here the artist clarifies the importance of the viewer’s relationship to his work in physical space: 'as you approach it, [the painting] begs the element of the ‘Void’ and rightly so. To rationalize its function would invite inner thought peculiar to the individual. That is to say that the Void freed of the oppression of the object invites contemplation suitable to its capacity.' "
